Cantoromanization (was:Yet another try at Pinyin-compatible tonal spelling for Mandarin)

From: "John Cowan"

> > The one used in the Sidney Lau dictionary ain't bad, and matches what
> > you see on Hong Kong signs. I don't know if I'd call it absolutely
> > flawless, but, again, consistency is what makes my heart go
> > pitter-pat.
> Construe, construe!  (or point to web page, or whatever)
Try this:

http://www.fi.muni.cz/usr/wong/teaching/chinese/notes/node15.html

I just found this on a quick Google search and it has almost exactly the
same information as what's printed in his dictionary (saving me lots of
typing). The forward of his dictionary states that he worked for the HK
government, so I guess it's no big secret why it's tied in to HK street
signs. Keep in mind that HK was a vestige of Empire, so when they say things
like: "aap" sounds like the "arp" in "harp", it's Received Pronunciation.
The "u" finals are also a little funky (eg: "sun" sounds to me more like
/sYn/ than /s@n/ (as one might infer from the "sounds like the "on" in
"nation" explanation)). You'll need software to see what characters they're
talking about, if you care. He uses numbers after the characters to mark
tones (which you wouldn't see on a traffic sign, natch); I just use my own
diacritics when taking notes. And I compress tone 1 and tone 7, but we've
had that discussion before. But hey, aside from all that, it's great!
Anyhoo, may I assume that if you have the Li and Thompson, you have the
Routledge Cantonese grammar by Matthews and Yip? I prefer Lau's romanization
quantum leaps over theirs.

Hope this helps,

Kou